The Champs Podcast

Breaking away from the highly produced NPR podcasts I generally lean to, I will be talking about one that is much more unstructured and conversational. Interview podcasts are great, but I find that they rely heavily on the interviewee which leads to inconsistent hit or miss episodes. The Champs is a podcast that rarely falls into this trap, and has a great track record of raw and fascinating interviews.

Much like the coveted WTF podcast, ‘The Champs’ gets into raw and honest conversations but does so with almost exclusively black guests. As someone who grew up in the squeaky Canadian suburbs, this ended up being a real culture shock for me. ‘The Champs’ brings forward a different and untainted point of view on true poverty, gang violence, rises to fame and falls from grace. Hosted by comedians Moshe Kasher and Neal Brennan (co-creator of the Chappelle Show), the podcast never feels gimmicky or disingenuous. With wild raunchy road stories from rappers to in depth conversation on the art of stand-up comedy, Neal and Moshe get into a true dialogue with the guests.

Unfortunately, ‘The Champs’ comes out very infrequently which usually signals the death of any podcast. The podcast has been updated so sparsely, that it is at the point of indefinite hiatus. Still, powerful episodes like the Cristela Alonzo interview are still available along with episodes with legends such as Chris Rock and Aziz Ansari.